Do I Want to be Well? SERMON SERIES:

Do I Want to be Well? SERMON SERIES: Does Jesus Still Matter? The Gospel of John March 25, 2012 Dr. Victor D. Pentz Senior Pastor Scripture Lesson: John 5:1-16 Rewind with me back in time a century and a half. It s the 1860s here in Atlanta. Some railroad workers on the job discover a spring of water down near what is known today as the City Hall East building. Some of the workers have physical ailments and after a few weeks of drinking that water and soaking in the water of that spring many improve and a number get well, which they attribute to the healing waters of this spring. Word spreads that it s as if they had discovered the fountain of youth. In 1872 a company begins bottling and selling the spring water. The road out to this spring they decide to name after the Spanish explorer who came to the Americas seeking the Fountain of Youth, Ponce de Leon or as we affectionately know it today, Ponce de Le-on Avenue the road that led to this healing spring, which today is nowhere to be found. Jerusalem had its healing spring in Jesus day the pool of Bethesda after which we named our great naval hospital in Maryland, Bethesda Naval Hospital. For years, skeptics of the Bible thought the name Bethesda was made up, until in the last century when along came the Dead Sea Scrolls and there it was clear as day Bethesda. Archeologists excavated the site at the Sheep Gate, which is today the St. Stephen s gate in Jerusalem. They unearthed two pools covering a very large area, 150 by 300 feet. I invite you to join the scene that day by turning to John 5 on page 1653 in your pew Bibles. While you re turning, imagine the scene described in Verse 3: "Here a great number of disabled people used to lie the blind, the lame, the paralyzed." It was a kind of open -air hospital without walls. Why did they come to Bethesda? This is fascinating. After John wrote this, a scribe, later in history tried to help us by adding a few words which were the end of verse 3 and all of verse 4, until they discovered earlier manuscripts didn t have these words. So if you look here in Chapter 5 you see there is no verse 4. It 1

goes from verse 3 to verse 5, and what was verse 4 is a tiny footnote at the bottom in small print. It says paralyzed and they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had. There s no reason to doubt what the scribe says he just shouldn t have monkeyed with John s memoir. But it does help us know of the local legend that from time to time angels would come down and bathe in this geothermal water and that if you saw this frothy bubbling and were first to jump in you d be healed. So imagine a scene of desperation mingled with hope. It s interesting that of possibly hundreds there that day, Jesus goes to one man. Jesus does not stand up on a chair with a megaphone and say, We ll be shutting this place down. I ll be coming around to touch each of you. No, he goes to one man, who has been there 38 years the senior beggar. Why him? I believe it was his helplessness. Perhaps he was the longest sick, with the fewest friends and the least hope. That should encourage us. What is your point of greatest helplessness this morning? That's where Jesus shows up. Is there some sorrow in your life that won't go away? Some temptation that plays you like a cheap guitar and wins every time over you? It s there Jesus wants to meet us this morning. John chapter 5:1-16 (minus verse 4): Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, Do you want to get well? 7 Sir, the invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me. 8 Then Jesus said to him, Get up! Pick up your mat and walk. 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, (Oh boy! Here we go!) 2 and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat. (They don t say, Yippee, you re healed. They ve known this man 38 years as disabled and it s, How dare you carry your mat on the Sabbath. ) 11 But he replied, The man who made me well said to me, Pick up your mat and walk. (You can tell this man is not used to taking responsibility for his own actions: Don t blame me. The man who healed me told me to pick it up and walk. ) 12 So they asked him, Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk? 13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. 14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. 2

The Disease of Low Expectations There s a Peanuts cartoons where Lucy says, "Charlie Brown, life is like a deck chair." "Like a what?" "Haven't you ever been on a cruise ship, Charlie Brown? Passengers open up these canvas deck chairs so they can sit in the sun. Some people place their chairs facing the rear of the ship so they can see where they've been. Other people face their chairs forward. They want to see where they're going. On the cruise ship of life, Charlie Brown, which way is you your deck chair facing?" Charlie thinks a minute and says: "Gee, I've never been able to get one unfolded." Have you ever felt that way? All around you people seem to be focused and to know where they re headed, and here I am fumbling my life away trying to unfold the deck chair. Meet a Charlie Brown from the first century who for 38 years 38 years would take us back to 1974 has been languishing by the pool of life, unable to as much as unfold his deck chair. Then one day a stranger threads his way among the bodies like we do on a crowded day at the beach and stops at the mat of the senior beggar. He asks what has to seem the most tasteless and cruel question you could ever ask a disabled person: "Do you want to get well?" I m afraid if I were this man my answer might be unprintable. Do I want to get well? Why do you think I ve been lying next to this crummy pool for 38 years? How dare you ask do I want to get well? But that s not how this man responds. He waffles just the slightest. Listen: I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me. He dodges the question, Do I want to get well? and instead says, My situation is impossible to change. I ve tried everything and nothing works. No way can I get into that water before others. This is my fate the pool of Bethesda. We have to be careful. Over time our sickness becomes our identity so we hide behind low expectations. Down deep this man may be thinking Once I get up and start walking I ll have to stay up and keep walking. Yikes, I ll have to buy an alarm clock, get up in the morning, hold down a job. Sometimes when people get well they inherit a whole new set of problems which may be worse than the ones they had when they were flat on their backs. Take this man. For 38 years he hasn t had to worry about the law, and then minutes after he s well he gets busted by the Sabbath cops for carrying his knapsack. Verse 10: "And so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat. " He says, in effect, "Don't blame me. The man who made me well told me to carry this mat. The Jews ask him, 'Who is this fellow?" and so on. Here he is sucked into the crossfire of controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees. Who d blame him for thinking, Life was much easier at the pool. Suddenly he has to pull his weight as a normal, healthy, functioning adult. Some people look at that and say, You know, I d rather be sick. The Price of Wholeness In the Pentz family down through the years one of the most wonderful things was to have a fever of one hundred. Any higher and you felt really bad and any lower you were told, Don t be a sissy. With 100 you were the queen of Sheba. You didn t feel that bad really. You d lie on the couch with unlimited TV and we d bring you trays of Sprite, put a hand on your forehead and give you lots of sympathy. Do you want to get well? Maybe, someday. 3

We have AA and other 12-step meetings honeycombed throughout our buildings during the week. Someone has noted that once you finally stop drinking, become sober, and break free, you have a whole new problem. The new problem is, What do I do with my new life? When I am drinking, I don t have to think about what to do with my life; the bottle tells me every move to make. When I m free it s wonderful and at the same time frightening. (Willimon) Do you want to get well? Go online to our website and find one of our support groups. Fifty years ago almost all of our health problems were diseases. Today more than 80% are related to lifestyle choices. Are you willing to change? Eat healthier, stop smoking, lose weight, get up tomorrow morning and exercise? Jesus doesn't ask the man, Do you hate your illness?" Of course, he hated his illness. That s not the question. It s, Will you pay the price of wholeness?" Historically Jerusalem had a whole population of beggars like this man. They lived off the almsgiving of thousands of pilgrims for whom it was considered exceedingly meritorious to give to the poor while visiting the holy city. Whole colonies of beggars lined the streets of Jerusalem. To this day areas of the Middle East have beggars unions and even surgical clinics where for a fee you, too, can be maimed to launch your career in begging. So in Jesus day a beggar would lose a good living if he got well. But now the question is: Are we really all that different? For some of us it would be our worst nightmare if we got well. Suddenly, like that, we'd lose the alibi for our all our failures. Who would we blame? Let me give you an example of someone I know well myself. Pointing to Our Scars Sometimes it would be our worst nightmare to get well. I was never as good a football player as I wanted to be. Both of my brothers got defensive MVP trophies on their college teams. It is no fun being overshadowed by your younger brothers. Then my junior year, my team, which I ve mentioned before the mighty Pomona College Sagehens was playing the Whittier College Poets I m not making this up. On a crackback block on a punt return, my knee exploded. I was carried off the field and taken by ambulance to the hospital. I spent hours in surgery, weeks on crutches, months in a cast, and my football career ended. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Instantly the pressure was off. Never again would I ever have to endure a humiliating comparison with my brothers. Best of all, I had a scar! It was this long. I started wearing Bermuda shorts: Look! I gave my all on the field of battle. I still use it. Play me in racquetball or one-on-one in basketball. Before every game what do I say? "Gee, I hope my knee holds up." And it's beautiful. If I lose, it's obvious why, and if I win, strike up the theme from Rocky. The kid beat the odds. There s nothing in the world like having a scar to point to when you need one. And that can be true of the scars in here as well. When someone calls us on our immaturity or selfishness, just point to the scar: "Oh, I do get moody, and clam up for days, and make life miserable for people, but you have no idea of the pain I ve been through. As long as I can stay angry at my ex, or at my parents, or God, or my lot in life, as long I can stay incapacitated by my past, I don't have to take responsibility for my present as I lay by my private pool of Bethesda. 4

We point to our scars, and get all kinds of mileage out of our infirmities. So the most frightening thing in the world is when this stranger comes through the crowd and stands by our mat with power to heal and says, Do you want to get well? Jesus is in this place. The image behind me in the stained glass window is simply a reminder of the towering presence of the Risen Christ among his people wherever two or three are gathered. He s asking, "Do you want to get well?" Rise Up and Walk It turns out the man in the story may want to be well, but for 38 years he s been locked into a single strategy for wholeness. Someone has said a good working definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome. This man is into bubbles. His motto is, Lose your troubles in the bubbles. He appears not even to look up when Jesus comes by. He scans the surface looking for bubbles. He fantasizes himself in bubbles. His cell phone ringtone is Tiny Bubbles. His favorite singer is Michael Buble. For him carbonation equals salvation! For 38 years it s been about bubbles bubbles bubbles. You and I have bubbles we chase. Many of them are the broken pieces of the American dream in terms of materialism, competition, and success. Someone has said, We climb the ladder of success our entire lives only to find the whole time it was leaning against the wrong wall. We re still not happy. We feel isolated. As Brent Curtis says, we live external lives of performance and efficiency while we lock our hearts in the attic and feed them only bread and water, duty and obligation. It s all a bubble. The missing piece in our puzzle of happiness is something God tells us from one end of the Bible to the other. It s the poor. God has made us in a way that we will never be happy without showing compassion for the poor, the outcasts, the sexually exploited, the hungry. We ll never find joy living in our own separate universes of us and them. Jesus says this morning, Do you want to be well? Then rise up and walk, to join in partnership with his children in need. If you re a guest, give prayers here and financial support where appropriate for you. If this is your church home, rise up and walk your talk to the front here. What we don t want to do is lie there on our bed of excuses with life s goodies piled around our mat, feeling empty and unsatisfied. God says, Rise up and walk. Some of you in this church last year at this time met a teenage boy who in some ways fits in that crowd of Bethesda among the the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. Sanjay Reid is blind and poor and attends the Salvation Army School for the Blind in Kingston, Jamaica. Sanjay was here a year ago when he was fifteen and gave us a gift of playing the piano in worship for a couple of minutes. I want you to see a 15-year-old blind boy rise up from his bed of disability. VIDEO Sanjay playing to a standing ovation. A week later I got a packet in the mail and inside was thick paper with bumps on it. It was this letter, written in Braille, from Sanjay to all of you. Fortunately tucked inside was what looked like another student s handwritten translation: Dear Peachtree, I must start out by commending you 5

for the wondrous things you have so far accomplished in partnering with this school. To tell you the truth [playing for you] was the first time I have had something that I could really dream of and be true to. It was my first time at shining at anything, where I really felt like someone. I had no idea that I would be chosen to fly on a plane just to play for a couple of hours. The first time on a plane; it was awesome. I cannot express how happy I am to have received this gift. Prayer: Lord Christ, here you stand, big as life next to our mat. We know our healing comes as we become your instruments for healing others. And we thank you for the particular way you are going to heal us today as we obey your call to rise up and walk. Amen. That morning when I woke up I knew that this day would be forever recorded both physically and mentally. Being a music composer and having someone recognize this factor of my personality is something that I have no words for. I am glad for the wonderful applause at the end of [my] pieces. I am glad that you could observe the world from my eyes. I now wish I was living in Atlanta and not Jamaica. I do hope there is another ten times to pack my case and fly off to the city where I shine. I thank God for all of this. Your brother, Sanjay Right now one of our projects is to buy Sanjay a piano and get it to him there in Kingston, Jamaica. Let s make this blind teenager our role model this morning. In this room and in our struggles: Rise up and walk. 6

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